Chief Fire Officer

Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue service provide a great service to us as residents of Gloucestershire, and they are one of the best value and most efficient in the country. However we are now in the sad position that the Fire Brigades Union held their first strike in over a decade, and while this one was only 4 hours long, it really signals the failure of Central Government to recognise the essential and lifesaving work of our firefighters do, and how they provide such a safety net for us as residents of Gloucestershire.

No one, least of all the firefighters themselves, wants to see a strike happen, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere and the fact is that the Government, with their pension reforms, are putting our lives at risk. A firefighter’s job is tough, both physically and mentally and they put their lives on the line for us, to rescue us in our hour of need. Currently they get a pension that is highlighted by the government as generous, and quite rightly so. They, as has been shown in Manchester recently, can lose their lives in the act of saving others. It is just right that they are rewarded for that with a decent pension. The government now wants to up the age on which a firefighter will receive that pension and that is just wrong.

In other physically demanding services, when someone is not able to take on the physical rigour of the job down to natural wear and tear of the human body, their experienced is harnessed by moving them to a desk based role. Because of the huge efficiencies made in GFRS already this can not happen as everyone, from the Chief Fire Officer down is an operational firefighter, there are no “desk jobs”. Therefore when someone is unable to keep the fitness standards, there is no real avenue except to thank them for their service and show them the door. This means not only has that firefighter lost their role, the fire service has also lost their valuable experience.

By raising the pension age, the government knows that they are also increasing the chance that firefighter will not reach proper retirement age, and therefore reducing the pension payments that are deserved. That is no way to say thank you to a firefighter who has given up so much though their service for us.

I think that yesterdays strike was just the first and we will have more to come until a resolution is reached. During the strikes, you will hopefully be lucky enough to not notice any change in service as the work done in community safety by GFRS is a great asset to the service and the number of incidents are reducing the overall number of incidents. There has also been a lot of planning to ensure that there is basic emergency coverage across the county. But if you are unfortunate enough to need the service, there may be a couple more minutes wait before it arrives, and also that successful and essential background work in community safety, protection and prevention as well as wider ranging resilience is non-existent. Because of this, I urge you to think more about your personal and family safety while the strikes are on, but do not resent the Fire Fighters for what they are doing, please think of the position they are in and give them your support.

At the end of the day, they are just like you or I, but they are willing to put it all on the line to ensure our safety, to be able to actually reach pensionable age before being released from service is a small ask.

Last week I was invited to the Passing Out parade of the newest recruits to Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service. Five new retained fire fighters completed their training at the Severn Park Fire and Rescue Training Centre, four of which are now stationed around Gloucestershire, to protect us in our time of need! In an environment where Health and Safety is paramount, it is not easy to find people who are willing to put it all on the line for other, probably people they don’t know. If that’s not setting yourself up to be a hero, I don’t know what is!

The evening started off with introductions from the centre staff giving an overview of why we were there, highlighting the work that goes into training the recruits and what the centre is capable of. We then met the training staff and they gave us an overview of the course, and their insights on how the recruits developed. I was there with Cllr Will Windsor-Clive who is the Cabinet Portfolio Holder that I shadow.

A quick slide show, set to music, showed the recruits in action and some very cool photos set against burning buildings gave more of a flavour of their experiences. Chief Fire Officer, Jon Hall (or “The Chief”) addressed the audience, consisting mainly of mums and dads, girlfriends, wives and children of the recruits. In thanking them for their support, he also highlighted just how their lives would all be affected by the choice the recruits made to be fire fighters and how their support was critical to the success of the fire service as a whole. He said that the recruits were now potential Heroes, but being a hero wasn’t just about diving in without thinking. The true hero does very heroic acts, but under the knowledge of doing the right thing by himself and his team. It sounds obvious, but when the adrenaline starts running in life and death situations, it’s the self-control and ability to think that is just as important as being able to physically fight fires. The recruits were then awarded with their certificates and the proud relatives were then invited for photos.

The evening culminated in a demonstration of the skills the recruits had learned. They showed us their ability to fight a building fire and rescue the “damsel in distress”. The sense of achievement from the recruits and the proudness of the relatives was almost palpable.

The majority of our fire service is manned by retained fire fighters, those members of our community who are willing to put themselves on the line, alongside their day job and other commitments, to, in essence, save us from ourselves. It was seeing the recruits and their relatives, as well as the staff who were there and would be taking on these new fire fighters in their teams (watches) that really brought it home to me just how much we take a good service for granted as its something we hope we will never need to use.

In my role as a County Councillor I am also the Labour Shadow Spokesperson for Fire, Planning and Infrastructure, the Cabinet post held by Will Windsor-Clive. I am going to do a number of posts looking at each aspect of the portfolio and this first one is around the Fire & Rescue Service. I had the brief from the Chief Fire Officer, Jon Hall, and his team this week to explain our Fire Service and just what it does. I have to be honest, I didn’t properly realise just how few people delivered such an incredible and broad service and just how effective that service is.

I always, probably from early youth, had the impression that fire stations were manned with lots of people, and when you see images in the media at major fires, there are always lots of equipment, vehicles and, crucially, firefighters doing their job. It wasn’t really until I have had the full breakdown of what assets we have, and just what a wide range of capability we have, covering a wide geographic area, yet with relatively few people.

I didn’t know for example that a single watch of firefighters is only around 7 people. These can be Full Time and/or retained staff which again makes it rather interesting. It is the collaboration, teamwork and effective management of the staff, equipment and resources that enable the fire service to deliver such an effective and life preserving service.

I think the Fire Service is one of these things that we hope never to have to use, but are really grateful that it is there, just in case. The fact they spend so much time raising awareness, doing home safety checks and encouraging (as well as enforcing) commercial enterprises to do the right thing is time really well spent as it has shown to dramatically reduce the amount of incidents. Coupled with the education side of things at Skillzone, we really have a service that is proactive and effective.

I think it’s really easy to take for granted that we will always have such a great level of protection, but maybe we should be just looking and taking a bit more notice of the work that they do on our behalf and for us just to realise what an asset we have and just how effective those people are who put themselves in harm’s way for us.

I feel very fortunate to have the Gloucestershire Fire Service as part of my Portfolio. There is not much to complain about as its one of the best performing services in the Country, but the ability to learn and highlight the great work they do is a real privilege.